Tag Archives: land

Land Improvements

On Friday drainage tile was installed in the field south of our house with an immediate stream of water,  The pictures below show the access cleared through the fence line connecting the two pastures at their southern extremity, a view of the location of the former dirt pile – now re-distributed and graded.  The middle view looks north towards our house. The final picture shows the remaining topsoil graded to make a mow-able slope on the west side of the lot approaching the road.

Below are the ditch through the woods near cook-out corner which should keep water from flooding the hay field.  In the top right is the swale dug to capture water coming off the hay field and re-direct it into the stream rather than the lane.

A new load of driveway rubble squared off our driveway. Finally, the drainage tile from the south lot continued to pour water for 24 hours.

Labor Day Weekend

We cut firewood to complete Angle Trail from the pasture to North Trail. We ended up cutting live trees; most were ash but a few cherry which were all stacked under the shed to dry for next winter.

Saturday we went to see Bill Nye. He was entertaining, if you were a grown up. But since he lectured, the kids were bored to the point of distraction. It was too bad; I think many people expected the Bill Nye the Science Guy from tv. He has a good sense of humor so his lecture was OK. His basic points: global climate change is happening at an alarming rate; we need to do something to lessen human beings’ impact on climate change; space exploration is good. I think he was preaching to the choir, though. Based on the level of applause, I think there were few people there that didn’t already believe those points.

Then we went to Applebee’s for a snack and had just a terrible experience. It took them so long to get our food, we were there 2 hours. They offered us free dessert to make up for it, but by that time we wanted just to get the heck out of there.  Sunday evening we met Helmers at Recovery Sports Bar in Verona, and had a good time.

Kathryn canned 14 jars of  tomatoes.

Landscaping

As the next phase in our home remodeling we are landscaping around the house, attachment and garage. This involves digging up old plants, moving them to new locations (in some cases) and planting new shrubbery.

I would dig around each shrub that was to be moved and then use my tractor and slip scoop to pull out any remaining roots, load the shrub into the slip scoop and move it to the new location.

There were a lot of shrubs to move.

So once all of these are removed, the dirt is re-filled and graded, landscape paper is put down and new plants are put in. I know, they look small, but they will grow – especially the blue globe spruce and purple Rhododendron.

Kathryn (behind Rhododendron) weeded around the house and we set in landscape paper.

The west side is planted. See how big that purple Rhododendron got to be?

 

The next day’s lineup ready to be planted.

We got bulk mulch from Olney’s carrying 3 cubic yards per truck load. It took 6 cubic yards total for everything. It was hot and humid work.

The finished product.

 

Kathryn takes pictures of the finale.